Social Media as Social Lubricant: How Ambient Awareness Eases Knowledge Transfer

Knowledge stickiness often impedes knowledge transfer. When knowledge is complex and the knowledge seeker lacks intimacy with the knowledge source, knowledge sticks in its point of origin because the knowledge seeker faces ambiguity about the best way to acquire the needed knowledge. We theorize that, given the extent of that ambiguity, knowledge seekers will make a choice to either ask for needed knowledge immediately after deciding it is needed, or wait and ask for it at a later date. We hypothesize that when knowledge is sticky, knowledge seekers will delay asking for knowledge and, in the interim period, use an enterprise social networking site to gather information that can lubricate stuck knowledge, such as how, when, and in what way to ask for the desired knowledge. We propose that by doing this, knowledge seekers can increase their ultimate satisfaction with the knowledge once they ask for it. Data describing specific instances of knowledge transfer occurring in a large telecommunications firm supported these hypotheses, showing that knowledge transfer is made easier by the fact that enterprise social networking sites make other peoples' communications visible to casual observers such that knowledge seekers can gather information about the knowledge and its source simply by watching his or her actions through the technology, even if they never interacted with the source directly themselves. The findings show that simple awareness of others' communications (what we call ambient awareness) played a pivotal role in helping knowledge seekers to obtain interpersonal and knowledge-related material with which to lubricate their interactions with knowledge sources.